by Katie Fforde
She overlooked his reference to her being a ‘nice girl’, not because she didn’t appreciate the compliment but because it implied his mother thought he was single. That wasn’t a conversation for now.
‘Oh no, you could bring the dogs. My father’s house – my house – is very dog-friendly. We have a boot room full of rugs – we could put them in there until they dry off. And if you’ve stuffed the turkey already, it should be fine in my kitchen although it’s not huge.’
‘I haven’t done the spuds yet. And I promised you Yorkshires.’ Fitz wasn’t yet convinced.
‘You can do it all in my kitchen. I’m not at all territorial.’
He grinned suddenly and it dawned on Stella again how very attractive he was. ‘Then we’re on! I’ll make a list of what we need to take.’
‘Just one thing – and this may sound a bit weird and neurotic …’
‘What?’
Now she was about to say it out loud it seemed even more weird and neurotic than it had in her head, but she took a deep breath. ‘Will you tell your girlfriend about the change of plans and venue? It’s just the sort of thing that if you told her about it later could be misconstrued. And then, although it is all perfectly innocent, you start to over-explain and it all gets silly.’
It took him a few seconds to make sense of this. ‘Well, I suppose I sort of see what you mean. “Oh, by the way, I didn’t spend Christmas in my mother’s house, we went to a lovely woman I met out walking’s house instead.”’
She ignored this ‘lovely’ and nodded. ‘After the event it would seem odd.’
‘I’ll ring her now.’ He hesitated. ‘Are you going to tell your boyfriend?’
Stella flapped a dismissive hand. ‘Nah! We’re on a break! He doesn’t care anyway.’
Stella took the food in her car and Fitz brought the dogs in his. As he had a little dog wrangling to do she got to her house a bit before he did.
She realised she didn’t have a lot of time to make the place look festive and was grateful for her habit of draping her homes with fairy lights even when it wasn’t Christmas.
She rushed into the back garden and detached a length of ivy from the garden wall and tucked it behind everything on the mantelpiece. Then she lit the wood burner.
‘Are you sure these hounds from hell can come in?’ said Fitz when he arrived a little later, holding them on leads, looking like a charioteer behind a team of eager horses.
She nodded. ‘I said the house is dog-friendly and I can’t bear to think of them being alone. It is Christmas, after all.’
‘I’ll go and get their beds.’
Stella made a fuss of Tris and Izzy so they wouldn’t notice that Fitz had left them. He was back very soon. ‘Just take the beds through there.’ She gestured the direction he should go in.
‘That’s just grand for the dogs if you can get them to stay there,’ he said a minute later. ‘The trouble is, they prefer to be with humans.’
‘It’s probably full of doggy smells which should be comforting for them.’
Fitz looked down at her, half smiling, half frowning. ‘My mother is going to love you!’
Although she’d invited him, Stella found his presence in her space rather unnerving. She needed to get him out of the house for a bit. ‘And I’m sure I’ll love her right back. Is it time you went to get her?’
‘Yes. Can I leave the dogs with you, then?’
‘Of course. Now off you go!’
Tristan and Isolde were not pleased to have been abandoned by Fitz. It was, Stella realised, possibly the second time they’d been abandoned by their owner in a very short time. They yelped and barked and tried to scratch their way through the front door.
Stella didn’t have a lot of experience with dogs. Her father’s dog had been trained by him and was always fairly well behaved. However, she was experienced with small children and decided she might as well treat Tris and Izzy the same.
‘Now listen, you dogs, I know you’re upset that Fitz has gone but he will be back and in the meantime we need to keep very calm. Follow me!’
She didn’t know why but she wasn’t going to question it: the dogs followed Stella into the boot room. It was dusty, full of boots, ancient fleeces and anoraks, dog leads, bowls and beds. Stella hadn’t even begun to tackle it yet. And now it had their dog beds in it.
‘And now, my darlings,’ she went on – it wasn’t quite professional to call schoolchildren ‘my darlings’ and Stella enjoyed not having to be professional – ‘you’re going to stay here while I get ready for Christmas.’
They weren’t convinced. They whined and jumped up at the stable door as if about to climb over it. If they did manage to scale it, she was sunk.
‘We’re going to be very calm,’ she said, very calmly, ‘and I’m in charge so you don’t need to worry. You can just lie in your beds.’
She pointed to their beds and eventually they got the message and lay in them. However, they didn’t look as if they’d stay there without an incentive.
Stella found some dog biscuits (probably years past their sell-by date but who cared?) and they inhaled them in seconds. Then she spotted her father’s old slippers on a shelf. She brought them down and gave one to each dog. ‘Chew on these and don’t get into mischief.’
She left the dogs happily occupied and could almost hear her father laughing from on high. She wouldn’t tell her sister though; Annabel wouldn’t think it funny at all.
As she went through to the kitchen the landline rang. ‘It’s Annabel, checking up on me,’ said Stella out loud. And it was.
‘Thank God! You’re there! You haven’t gone to that man for Christmas!’ she said.
‘It could be I just haven’t left yet. It’s only a quarter to twelve.’ She needed to get the turkey in but she couldn’t resist the temptation to tease her sister.
‘Nope. You’d have gone by now. You can’t bear being late.’
Stella sighed. ‘Oh, OK, I’m not going to a strange man’s house for Christmas. Satisfied?’ She kept her tone casual, hoping that she sounded innocent. She was telling the truth, but it wasn’t really the whole truth.
‘But you won’t be lonely?’
‘No, I’ll be fine,’ said Stella, thinking it was typical of her sister to be so contrary. ‘But I’d better go. I’ve got spuds to peel.’
‘Really? You’re doing Christmas dinner just for you?’
Again, Stella had done the wrong thing in her sister’s eyes. If she’d said she was having Prosecco and a tin of Roses for dinner, as had been her declared plan, her sister would have said that was pathetic and she should have something proper. But now she’d talked about peeling potatoes she was going to too much trouble. There was no pleasing some people, particularly not if they were Stella’s sister.
‘Roast potatoes are my favourite part of Christmas dinner,’ said Stella. ‘I just thought I’d do a few.’ Both statements were factually correct, but neither was absolutely true.
Fortunately Annabel’s own Christmas duties saved Stella from more interrogation.
‘I’m coming, darling,’ Stella overheard Annabel coo. This told her that her sister’s mother-in-law was within earshot. Normally Annabel was quite brisk with her children but she always wanted to be the perfect mother in front of her husband’s (quite wealthy) family.
‘I’d better let you go, Bells,’ said Stella. ‘Have a lovely day!’ Annabel never liked having her name shortened but Stella thought it was good for her to have to put up with it sometimes.
By the time Stella heard voices at her door the turkey had been in the oven for nearly an hour, the potatoes were parboiled and she’d done the sprouts. She went to the front door to welcome her guests – the first she had had since the cottage had become hers. She suffered a flurry of nerves and hoped the house looked Christmassy and welcoming.
‘Hello! I’m Stella. Do come in!’ she said.
Fitz was escorting a tiny old lady dressed in a bright red skirt and coat, to w
hich she’d added a large bunch of holly which at second glance proved to be fake.
‘Mother of God! This is kind of you!’ she said. ‘Taking us in on Christmas Day, and all because of those naughty puppies of mine!’
‘You had been going to take me in,’ said Stella, standing aside so her guests could get through the door.
Fitz gave her a casual peck on the cheek as if she were an old friend. Considering they’d been surveying incredibly muddy sofas earlier in the day she supposed they were now friends. ‘So what have you done with the brutes?’ he asked.
‘They’re in the boot room,’ said Stella. ‘I’m unwilling to check on them as they’re being so quiet but I know Mrs – um – your mother, Fitz, will want to see them.’
‘Call me Mac, darling.’
‘That’s unusual!’ said Stella. ‘What’s that short for?’
‘Immaculata,’ said Mac. ‘A fine old Irish name. Now let’s get a look at the dogs. But wait until I’m sitting down.’
‘Let me get you settled,’ said Stella, slightly concerned that their quietness might be sinister. Supposing the ‘past their sell-by date’ biscuits were poisonous and they’d died?
When Fitz’s mother was settled in the armchair next to the wood burner, Stella went to fetch the dogs. She opened the door to the boot room. Tristan and Isolde looked up when they heard the door open and then, half-eaten slippers forgotten, looked intelligent.
Stella was not fooled. She knew this look just meant ‘Is there any food involved?’
She put them on their leads. She was not going to have their erstwhile owner crushed to death on her watch.
‘Darling child!’ said Mac when Stella appeared in the sitting room behind animals that could have out-pulled Thomas the Tank Engine when he was trying really hard. ‘They are allowed off the lead in the house.’
Since she lost her grip on them at that moment, Stella didn’t have to reply as Mac disappeared under a flurry of paws and fur. She was just grateful Mac had been sitting down or she would definitely have been knocked over.
There was a lot of shouting and remonstrating until Fitz pulled them off, revealing his mother, who brushed herself down.
‘Mother, dear,’ said Fitz, ‘those dogs—’
‘I know! I know!’ said his mother. ‘They’re too much for me.’
‘Let’s open a bottle,’ said Stella, aware that Fitz’s mother wouldn’t want to talk about her precious dogs being rehomed on Christmas Day. ‘It is Christmas, after all.’
‘Good idea,’ said Fitz. ‘We brought plenty of them, Mother, so no worries there.’
‘I drink very little myself these days,’ Mac confided to Stella when Fitz was in the kitchen, having insisted that getting drinks was ‘man’s work’. ‘But I do like to see people have a good time.’ She paused. ‘I was so delighted when Fitz told me all about you.’
‘We only met this morning, so he doesn’t know that much,’ said Stella.
‘You like dogs, which is a grand start.’
Stella felt a pang of sympathy for Fitz’s girlfriend, who didn’t. Fitz loved his mother and would want to please her but he shouldn’t have to restrict himself to the animal-friendly when it came to choosing a potential life partner.
Fitz appeared with a tray of glasses and a couple of bottles in his pockets. One of the bottles contained sherry, which Fitz must have brought. On the tray was a tiny liqueur glass that Stella recognised from her father’s cabinet.
‘OK,’ said Fitz. ‘This is just the first pass at the drinks. I know my mother will have a glass of sherry—’
‘I’m sure there’s a better glass than that in the cabinet,’ said Stella.
‘That wee glass is the perfect size for me,’ said Mac.
Fitz gave Stella a self-satisfied nod that made her smile. There was something irrepressible about him she couldn’t help warming to. Rather like the dogs.
‘And so to our lovely hostess?’ Fitz said. ‘I have wine in the kitchen and beer. Otherwise it’s whatever you already have in the house.’
‘I’ll have a glass of sherry, please.’ She’d always dismissed sherry as an old person’s drink, but thought that actually she might quite like it.
When he handed her a wine glass full of it she really hoped she did like it. ‘Fitz? Surely there’s a middle way between the thimble you’ve given your mother and this?’
‘I’m sure there is, but I’m a man of extremes.’
‘Just sip it, dear,’ said Mac. ‘It’ll be fine.’
Fitz produced the other bottle from his pocket. ‘It’s stout,’ he declared. ‘I can’t be drunk in charge of a cooker that’s not my own.’
He was obviously determined to cook Christmas dinner even if it was no longer to be served in his mother’s house. ‘Shall I come and show you where we’re up to?’ Stella suggested.
‘Not at all. I’ll find my way around and get on with the Yorkshire puddings. I brought your tin, Mother, so I’m confident.’
Stella looked at her guest and thought she was almost like a Christmas ornament, she was so small and perfect.
‘You don’t mind a man ferreting around in your kitchen?’ asked Mac.
‘Nope. It was my father’s kitchen for years and years. It’s only very recently become mine.’
‘You miss him.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘I do. Very much. But being in his house, with guests, helps a lot.’
The two women took sips of their drinks and looked at each other, not speaking and content to be silent.
Then Fitz came in. ‘I am so sorry!’ he said, possibly for the seventeenth time that day. ‘I’ve just discovered these! Your father’s slippers! They’re destroyed.’
He was mortified and Mac put her hand on Stella’s knee in a gesture of comfort.
Now it was Stella’s turn to be mortified.
‘Actually, that’s fine. I gave them to the dogs earlier. To keep them quiet.’
Stella realised she was being regarded reproachfully by two pairs of eyes. ‘I know! How are they supposed to know the difference between shoes they can chew and those they can’t, if I give them slippers to chew?’
‘But you thought, they’re being rehomed so that’s not my problem?’ suggested Fitz. There was a protective edge to his tone that Stella hadn’t heard before, and she suspected he was more dedicated to his pups than he was letting on.
‘I did not!’ She was indignant, partly because she was in the wrong. ‘And I refuse to talk – or let anyone else talk – about rehoming on Christmas Day!’
Fitz shrugged. ‘Fair enough.’ He went back to the Christmas dinner.
With Fitz having taken over the kitchen, refusing to let Stella do any more cooking, it was up to her to entertain his mother.
‘More sherry?’ she said politely.
‘Tell you what,’ said Mac with a charming smile. ‘Let’s find something nice to watch on telly then we don’t have to make polite conversation for however many hours it takes my son to get that turkey out of the oven and on to the plates?’
‘Oh!’ said Stella, surprised but relieved. She felt as though she’d been up for days and it was still only early afternoon. ‘Let’s see if we can find Roman Holiday. I’ve always loved Audrey Hepburn and one can get a bit fed up with Christmas films. They always have proper snow and I get jealous.’
‘Perfect. I’ll have a little nap while it’s on. The marvellous thing about being old, dear, is that you lose your politeness filter. Instead of being tactful and careful not to offend people, you say exactly what you think.’
Stella couldn’t help smiling. What Mac had just said was undoubtedly true, but Stella was certain Mac hadn’t lost her filter at all: she was just using old age as an excuse to be as blunt as she liked.
As Stella allowed her eyes to close, cosy on the sofa with a dog on each side of her, she realised there was a disconnect. Fitz had implied the dogs had been wished on to his mother almost against her will, but surely this feisty
woman wouldn’t be bullied into anything? Something was up.
‘OK! It’s on the table, folks!’ said Fitz some time later.
The poor man had done his best, Stella realised. Christmas dinner was a big ask, but while the meal he presented looked perfectly edible it didn’t look festive or particularly appetising. The plates had slices of turkey on them and there was a bowl of roast potatoes and some sprouts, but there were none of the little extras: the pigs in blankets, roast parsnips, several sorts of stuffing or cranberry sauce.
Stella’s sister Annabel (who did go over the top with these things) always had at least four different vegetables: carrots, celeriac with chestnuts and peas cooked with lettuce, as well as several vegetarian options for the main course. Stella usually felt slightly put off by so many dishes on the table all at the same time, but now she realised that without them, the occasion did seem a little flat.
‘This looks lovely!’ said Stella. ‘Shall I find some napkins?’
She was not at all sure her father had napkins, paper or otherwise, but she might be in luck. As a single man, even one as old as he had been, women gave him presents. It was worth a hunt in a few kitchen drawers.
She came back with a roll of kitchen towel.
‘Let’s start,’ said Mac. ‘The turkey isn’t going to taste any better for us having looked at it for a few minutes.’
‘Hold on!’ said Fitz. ‘Just hang on a giddy minute!’
He left the room and came back with a baking tray full of a Yorkshire pudding looking like a small golden pillow, only with crispy bits at the edges.
‘That looks amazing!’ said Stella, hoping she didn’t sound surprised.
‘Oh, now we’re talking,’ said Mac. ‘I was just missing the frilly bits, you know?’
‘Actually I did buy all those extras we all love at Christmas, including gravy made by some famous chef and stuffing with truffles in it. And the dogs enjoyed it all very much. Including the “Bag for life – Christmas edition” they came in.’
‘Oh no!’ said Stella. ‘I hope the plastic won’t be bad for them!’